


Blueberries (or not everyone believes in faith)

by Harryissuchalittleshit



Series: To Be Intelligent and Young and Witty in the Aftermath of War [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bible Study, Catholic Character, Catholic Guilt, Catholicism, Character Study, Divorced parents, Dumbledore's Army, F/M, Michael becomes the Astronomy professor, Michael is Catholic, Minor Character Death, loss of a parent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:15:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27251803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harryissuchalittleshit/pseuds/Harryissuchalittleshit
Summary: Faith is for those who believe...in whatever they may believe. Michael Corner needs his faith, he needs this connection to something more, it's the only way his father will love him. His mother is against it, but then when Michael goes to Hogwarts, he's not the only one who has faith in something more.Faith gets him through it all, his parents divorce, Hogwarts, the war, everything in the years after. Faith helps him stay safe, and it helps him hide, just like the old blueberry patch in his father's backyard.
Relationships: Cho Chang/Michael Corner, Cho Chang/Roger Davies
Series: To Be Intelligent and Young and Witty in the Aftermath of War [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1981820





	Blueberries (or not everyone believes in faith)

**Author's Note:**

> And now let's bring Catholicism to Hogwarts.

When Michael Corner was four years old, he became the keeper of lost things.

He was the keeper of secrets and magic and guilt, all lost things to his parents. His mother who was magic and his father who was not. Magic was a special thing, it was warm and friendly and dangerous in the eyes of his father.

His mother didn’t agree with Sunday morning church service, but his father took him anyways, and made him go to Sunday school and even Wednesday night youth group. Michael didn’t understand how magic could be bad when Jesus Christ did magic in his miracles.

Those questions get him kicked out of Sunday school for three weeks and his father makes him read the Bible every night until his suspension is over.

He realizes after that, that some things should be lost.

~`~

When Michael Corner was nine, his mother took him and together they left his father.

He only sees his father on weekends after that, the Saturdays they use to watch football and the Sundays they go to church. He doesn’t have to go to youth group anymore, but he still sees his friends at school. He’s no longer part of the Sunday school, and his father doesn’t make him try out for the choir like he feared.

Instead, his father grows angry and mean, and he’s sent back and forth between them like an owl.

He becomes the keeper of lost things, and hides out in the blueberry patch to avoid both of his parents. He keeps a bag of toys and his Bible and a canteen of water when he hides. It’s easier to be lost in blueberries than to listen to the same argument over and over and over again.

Out in the blueberry patch, he learns how to pray.

~`~

Eleven becomes his worst birthday, his mother doesn’t want him to wear his Cross to Hogwarts and his father can’t love him without it.

Michael runs away to Hogwarts with his Cross hidden under his shirt and his Bible tucked deep into his trunk. He doesn’t know if he’ll read it, if he’ll pray with no blueberry patch to lie in, or if he’ll find a way to say grace before each meal.

Ravenclaws believe in knowledge and wisdom, and the first night they spend in the castle, Sue Li gets into a fight with Terry Boot about Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity. Sue stands by her _faiths_ , and Terry argues the beliefs stated that Michael knows.

He learns quickly that _FAITH_ is different to all of them. What Terry believes in is different from what Michael and Sue and Padma Patil and Anthony Goldstein all grew up believing. They learn quickly also that arguing in the common room is saved for Thursday nights and that it was time for them to go to bed before classes started.

The whole castle feels alive though, and Michael makes himself stay up late to reread the story of Jesus’ birth using the only spell that he knows.

_Lumos_ , a light in the dark.

~`~

Hogwarts becomes his safe haven away from his parents fighting. He’s too young to be pulled between them. He’s also too old to be used as a bargaining chip. At fifteen, he makes Hogwarts his home, staying for Christmas and Easter with claims of studying for his exams.

His father is disappointed, these are important holidays, important services that he’s missing.

He spends those services with Anthony’s family, but instead of Christmas its Hanukah and Easter is Passover. Michael was always curious about how the rest of his friends believed, Anthony had stories given to him from his surviving grandparents. Michael heard about the war his grandfather fought in through new eyes and a horrifying perspective.

Anthony had a community that held him close, not only for his youth, but also because of his specialty.

Michael had a blueberry patch and his Bible and summer after summer of being treated like an owl.

He was too old to be an owl at thirteen and fourteen, he gets tired of the fighting finally at fifteen. War is coming to Hogwarts, he has a girlfriend, his friends are feeling the pressure the same as him. War is hot on their tails and Sunday morning services feel suffocating.

~`~

War comes to Hogwarts in the form of Dolores Umbridge and her new rules and anger. She’s a cruel woman, with claims to one thing and one thing only, following orders. Anthony saw it coming when Lupin was kicked out, and Michael sees it now with Umbridge pinning badges on the Slytherins chests.

Umbridge doesn’t know what’s coming though. She doesn’t know what they can do when they band together, and it becomes obvious when they form Dumbledore’s Army. No one makes groups and clubs illegal unless they’re afraid, unless they know something is coming.

She doesn’t know the fight they’ll face, she doesn’t know what a ragtag bunch of teenagers can do.

Umbridge is out for Dumbledore and Potter, and Michael can’t help but laugh her.

It was never going to be Dumbledore or Potter that fought the little battles, it was always going to be them. It was going to be Michael and Anthony and Terry, it was going to be Lisa and Padma and Isobel. They were the soldiers, the ones fighting the quick jests and rummages.

Michael perfects his stunning spells and his curses and he learns how to perform a Patronus charm. He learns how to defend himself, how to defend his friends, how to defend those that don’t know how.

The year ends and the summer is bright and hot and sweltering, he spends most of his time either with Anthony or Cho Chang or Terry and Padma. He shows Anthony his blueberry patch and they share stories of their childhood, he shows Cho his blueberry patch and they leave with purple fingers and tongues.

The summer is bright, but then news comes around ever few days of a new disappearance or a new death. Muggles are being rounded up and the Muggleborns that defend them are being killed.

Michael knows that he should be afraid for his father, for his church friends, their congregation, but he can’t make himself feel it. He’s losing his faith in others, in a kind and just world, in ever finding a way out of the blueberry patch.

Hogwarts is at war, but it’s different than the year before. The war was inside the walls with Umbridge, now it’s the mounting pressure on the outside.

Hannah Abbott’s mother is killed and she’s pulled out of school, Michael’s father is killed and he rereads his father’s favorite Bible stories. His mother writes him every week, he’ll own his father’s house when he’s eighteen, his car when he comes home, and she sends him his Cross to wear when everything else spirals.

The chain is thinner than the one that Michael wears, but the silver carries the same weight. He feels a small bit of himself come back and he feels his faith grow stronger.

Hogwarts doesn’t have a blueberry patch, but it does have the astronomy tower and Michael feels safer being able to see the sky.

~`~

His mother wants to bring him home when Dumbledore is killed, and Michael refuses. His mother wants him to stay home from Hogwarts when September comes around, and Michael refuses. His mother wants him to stop fighting with the DA, and Michael refuses, only to make the point of it.

Anthony follows Neville Longbottom and Justin Finch-Fletchley into the Room of Requirement, Michael only follows when Hogwarts grows too loud.

There’s no place to pray in the Room of Requirement, or in Hogwarts itself, but Michael finds a place in the hidden tunnel between Hogwarts and the Hogs Head. After his first Sunday of hiding and rereading his Bible, he gets company.

Terry claims to believe in something different, but they make peace when Anthony joins them. Padma and Sue roll their eyes and call them heathens and tease them through every story they read out loud to each other. When Luna Lovegood meets with them, she laughs at them like Padma and Sue do, but she also asks questions.

Luna Lovegood wants to know the how and the why. Terry is Christian, Anthony is Jewish, and Michael is Catholic, they all argue over the same stories, but they come up with one final answer.

_Faith_ is about hope, and hope is the one thing they need right now more than anything.

~`~

When Neville comes out of the portrait hole with Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger, Michael feels his _faith_ restored. His Cross burns against his skin in a familiar way and he knows that they’re going to win this final battle.

He’s one of the many that charge the grounds, Padma and Sue at his sides, Isobel and Terry and Lisa behind him.

Four of them make it out alive, Terry and Lisa are both killed.

Michael knows that he’ll hear Padma’s screams in every nightmare for the rest of his life. He’ll hear Terry’s last words, ‘God save us all’ in the back of his head every time he prays. And he’ll hear Lisa’s body thump on the ground, in every breath that he takes.

When it’s over with, when the dust settles, and they figure out who’s dead and who’s injured and who made it out to tell the tale, Michael let’s himself mourn for his father.

~`~

The blueberry patch thrives in the heat of July and Michael can’t make himself go into the house. He let’s his fingers get stained purple and when his Hogwarts letter arrives, he goes back to school for one last year.

Cho comes and visits him, they don’t date anymore, but they both have dreams that scare them and mothers that don’t know what to do with them. Cho at least graduated already, she moved out of her mother’s home and started working as a Welcome Witch at St. Mungo’s to pass information out to the Order of the Phoenix.

Michael goes back to Hogwarts to actually learn everything that he was supposed to his seventh year and it doesn’t feel the same without Terry or Lisa or even Lucas Phillips there. At least he has Anthony and there Bible study group.

It’s only the two of them and Luna now, but Luna still asks her questions and Michael still argues with Anthony.

~`~

Michael spends a few years at the Ministry, a few years in different shops in Diagon Alley, and then he goes back to Hogwarts.

Astronomy is the story of the stars, and Michael always felt better when he could see the sky. Cho becomes the Charms professor after years of hating herself at St. Mungo’s. And Rodger Davies rounds them off as the flying instructor and Quidditch referee.

Michael isn’t surprised when Rodger pursues Cho, but he is surprised when Cho has three kids with him.

She names Michael godfather to her only daughter, Ella.

Then he gets to watch their relationship fall apart. He gets to be an owl between Cho and Rodger until he finally gets tired of it. It took him a lot longer than his parents, but that’s only because he has Conrad and Mason and Ella to think about now too.

Cho isn’t the first or the last of his friends to have a baby. Isobel and Padma both have their oldest before they’re twenty. Sue gets married and has a baby girl in the years after, and Anthony adopts Isobel’s youngest eighteen years after the end of the war.

Michael is the odd one out, but it doesn’t bug him. He has his _faith_ , his friends, and his own little blueberry patch at Hogwarts now.

He wears his little silver Cross proudly in the halls, he holds a Bible study open to everyone on Sunday afternoons, and in the summers, he has his safe haven in a blueberry patch in a house he can’t make himself live in.

~`~

“Professor Corner?”

Michael turned around and looked at his youngest godchild, Asher Cohen-Goldstein.

He had Lucas MacDougal, Ella Davies, Kimiko Li-Collins, and Asher Cohen-Goldstein to look after when they graced the halls of Hogwarts. Lucas was the oldest, he had been a Ravenclaw like Michael, and like his mother Isobel. Kimiko had been next, she had been a Gryffindor, bright and wild, but just as wise as her mother. Ella was only older by two years, a Ravenclaw and brighter than her mother and smarter than her father. While Asher was the baby, two years younger than Ella, a Slytherin with a heart of pure gold and ambition like nothing Michael had ever seen.

Lucas came to one of his Bible studies, and never came back. Kimiko came and laughed and teased Michael about every story, just as her mother had. Ella came and listened and questioned, and Michael missed Luna until he wrote to her after dinner that night.

Asher came and argued and wore his Star of David proudly around his neck. His fathers’ religion, their faith loud and clear and proud on his chest.

“Yes Asher?” asked Michael, as Asher adjusted his glasses and held one of the spare Bible’s that Michael always kept in his office. “Can I help you?”

“Papa Tony wanted me to ask if you were coming to my Confirmation on Saturday,” said Asher, and Michael knew that Anthony had never asked.

“Of course,” said Michael, smiling at Asher. Asher was the tallest of his godchildren, taller than him, taller than Anthony and his husband Avery. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world Asher.”

Michael had gone through his own Confirmation and his own christening and through all the steps of being fully indoctrinate into Catholicism. He had also celebrated with Anthony when he had done the same for his faith.

He wouldn’t miss it for Asher, for any of his godchildren. He was proud of the people they had become, proud of any of the kids that had walked through these halls, who had the chance to survive.

“You’re a man now,” said Michael, because at thirteen, they had declared that Asher was a man. Four years later, on the eve of his graduation, he was proving it. “You have been for years, and I am so proud of you. Don’t ever forget that.”

Asher nodded and smiled at Michael, before turning to the door, leaving the Bible in his hands by the bowl of blueberries near the door.

~`~

Michael was the keeper of lost things, the keeper of children, of friends, of lost hope and _faith_.

But more importantly, he was the keeper of stories and blueberries, which was all he ever needed.

**Author's Note:**

> So while I grew up in a non-religious home, my father was raised Catholic and so were my grandparents. I can count on one hand how many times I've been to a proper church service, and it was long before I was in high school or even middle school. That being said though, I really related to Michael in this story, every time my parents fought or something bad happened, I would go hide in the raspberry patch in my yard with my favorite books and try to forget everything.
> 
> Michael becoming like a spiritual guide at Hogwarts when he becomes a professor is him becoming what he needed growing up. Religion is obviously never talked about in the canon, but we know there are religious characters, Harry is wizard Jesus after all.
> 
> That all being said, let me know if I made a wrong assumption about Catholicism, but this is based a lot around my own experience with religion.


End file.
